Outdated

I just had a birthday recently, and while I'm not going to start lying about my age anytime soon, I have to admit to feeling a little over the hill. I know, silly thirty-three-year-old whining. I'm the latest birthday among my closest friends, I've no grey hair to speak of, and all my faculties are intact. Maybe just a tiny amount of complaining?

The two main things that made me start feeling outdated were my daughter starting kindergarten and my attending classes at the junior college. On the one hand, I'm of the average age for parents of Small Person's classmates. On the other, I'm a generation older than my classmates, most of whom graduated high school recently. I feel somewhat out of place in both environments. Walking through campus to attend my own class, however, I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb. I'm so obviously (to my mind) older, uncool, unaware of the social conventions. The texting, the clothing, music, slang, is all unfamiliar. I'm old.

To be fair, I felt very similarly when I actually was in high school. I didn't really fit in, and always felt some level of anxiety about that. I guess I had a coinciding level of impatience with those who did fit in, also. Maybe I was just old before my time. The phrase "those dang kids" already leaping to my lips a good forty years before it was necessary. Whatever. That doesn't mean I'm going to stop giving those kids dirty looks when their phones ring mid-class.

As for the kindergarten... That's just another arena for my social dysmorphia. What can I say, I'm a mess of issues. This one reads like this: I'm old enough to be more successful, better dressed, more organized, etc. than I currently am. Why am I not? These other people seem so much more together than I am. Except when they don't, and then I hope I look better in comparison. Lame.

The moral of this post? I apparently worry too much about what other people think of me. Quit it.

And, I should get some eye cream.